Cold case: Kansas man arrested 42 years after a woman was fatally shot in Great Bend

Steven Hanks was 25 when his 23-year-old neighbor was shot and killed at a Great Bend trailer park in 1980.

He was arrested Thursday in Oxford, Kansas — more than 42 years after the killing.

Hanks, 68, is facing a second-degree murder charge in the killing of Mary Robin Walter. She was a wife and mother going to nursing school at Barton County Community College when she was shot multiple times.

“Clearing this case, hopefully, it brings closure to the family and brings justice for the community,” Barton County Sheriff Brian Bellendir said during a news conference Friday.

He said Walter still has family in Kansas.

Walter was found fatally shot when officers responded to a homicide call around 6:50 p.m. on Jan. 24, 1980 at Nelson Trailer Park. The trailer park no longer exists. It was adjacent to the site of the Great Bend Municipal Airport.

Hanks was a suspect after the shooting, Bellendir said, but was never arrested or prosecuted. Bellindir said it’s likely the prosecutor then didn’t think there was enough evidence to charge the case.

Hanks was later arrested in a separate 1981 Barton County case involving rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and aggravated battery, Kansas Department of Corrections records shows. He was convicted and sentenced in 1983 to prison. He was released in 1991 on parole in Cowley County, records show.

Over the years, different detectives investigated and reinvestigated the case. Bellendir said the case had been open, though not actively investigated, since he started there in 1982.

Detective Sgt. Adam Hales decided to look into the case in April.

“After taking a fresh look at the case, it became evident that some information had been initially overlooked and some had been added at a later date,” Bellendir said. “This was unknown to the original investigators.”

More officers were added to help look into the case. Officers interviewed different witnesses who now live in other parts of the country.

New evidence was found in October.

Barton County Attorney Levi Morris would not say what the new evidence is or if it involved DNA evidence, which has advanced greatly since the 1980s.

“Whether it’s the old evidence or the new evidence, we’ll just save that for court,” he said, “and we’re not going to make any comment on what it is at this time.”

This week, officers obtained an arrest warrant for Hanks who now lived in Burden, Kansas. Hanks was arrested Thursday by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. He is now in Barton County Jail, where he is being held in lieu of a $500,000 bond. Hanks will have a first appearance either Friday or Monday.

Bellendir said he believes this is the oldest homicide arrest in Kansas. The department now does not have any open homicide cases that they are the lead agency on, he said.